Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-10-18
TUESDAY, OCTOBER IS, 1887.
The Pulpit and the stage.

The Pulpit and the stage.
That little episode in church IL
Nashville, Tennessee the other day
when the preacher attacked the theatri
cal profession, calls to mind the fact thai
for many years past there has been q
very strong opposition on the part Of
the pulpit generally towards the stage
And that brings to mind the fact that in
its origin and inception the drama was
a purely religious institution. The
book of Job is perhaps the oldest Bit
of literature extant. A careful study
of it discloses the fact that it is decid.
edly dramatic in its structure and
treatment OF the subject matter. This
is one OF the canonical books of the
Hebrew and Christian sacred writings.
Greece is usuallycreditedwith being the
birthplace of the drama, and among
those wonderful people religion and
dramatic art were closely connected
as m other and child. The earliest
trac es of tragic compositions found in
Attic literature bear the deepest re-
ligious impress. All the specimens
OF high tragedy left by the master
minds Of Athens are religious to their
very core. 1ischylus, is grand in
the supernatural gloom from the
frowns of stern and angry gods
with which he fills every page of his
Prom etheus Vinctus, and of all his
other writings now extant. His sue
cessor, sophocles, in his Edipus at
Co1oha Is as terrible in the super
natural agencies which he brings to
bear in his treatment of grand story.
So it is with all the other dramas bear
ing the name of Sophocles. The Me-
dea is grandly terrible. By the time
we reach another generation, We find
in Euripides a great change. Skepti-
cism has taken firm possession OF the
poets mind. He cannot see with
the eye OF faith the flashing of indig-
nation from the terrible eyes of an
angry god bent on the impious wretch
who dared to steal the sacred spark
from the altar of heaven. But unbe-
liever as the last Of Athens great
tragic poets was, he is forced by the
traditions of his art to maintain all
the forms OF religion in his compost
tiohs.
Getting down by a long de-
scent to the origin OF the drama
among English speaking people,
we find that the same
influences, only of purely Christian
type, lay at the roots of dramatic art
and nourished it into life and strength
among us as in Greece. The Mystery
plays in which Biblical subjects were
presen ted to the people were the first
dram attic representations known in
Europe. They were tinged strongly
with comic coloring, very pictur-
esque and fine in stage effects, but
even the devil who played the parts
now assigned to clowns, is part of
religion.
German literature is very rich in
poetical compositions of a very early
date, and they are all made grand by
a very liberal use OF religion. The
grand and gloomy mythology of the
Goths abound in all these remains of
the past intellectual and artistic peo-
pie of Northern Europe.
When the purely religious play
passed off the stage Of the world, and
the drama took wider range of SUBJ
jects and Of the treatment of them, it
did not by any means become ire
ligious. Whatever may have been
Shakespeare's private views Of relig-
ion, he certainly has preserved in his
great tragedies all that was whole.
some, strong and catholic in the
creeds of his time. Few preachers have
ever from any pulpit delivered ser
mons SO calculated to build peopl,
ND in manly morality, and to dete
them from unmanly vices, as ar,
such PLAYS as Macbeth, Hamlet
Othello, Lear, and in fact the Who'll
line of dramas left the world by tn
inspired pen of the Divine William.
Nor did the pulpit ever array itse
AGAINST the stage until religion deter
GRATED into that miserably false, nal
row and hide-bound type, sour OF Wis
age. uncultivated of mind and hypc
critical of heart, known as Puritanlsm
It is dead now, but it lives with u
still in many of its sickly and falls
views of life, especially of the pleasan
side of life. A noticeable instance
is this clerical antagonism tt
the stage. In its pristine purity
Puritanism held laity and clerics